Morten Lauridsen BiographyMorten Lauridsen is America’s pre-eminent composer of choral music, a creator whose work has entered into the hearts of countless singers, performers and audiences. He has reached beyond the borders of his native land to an international audience; his work has been the focus of a number of superb recordings devoted exclusively to his music, and these recordings featuring his works have garnered critical acclaim as well as honors, including three Grammy nominations for recordings of his music. Lauridsen, who is a distinguished professor of composition at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, is a meticulous craftsman, whose work radiates the uncanny quality of art that has always seemed to exist in its own perfection.
He is a composer whose primary emphasis is upon the voice: Lauridsen writes long, arching and highly expressive lines. He has made a close and profitable study of vocal music from all historical periods, including plainchant, Renaissance polyphony, and classical art song.
In particular, Lauridsen has studied the choral music of the high Renaissance, and this study has had a decided influence on the development of his inimitable sound. From the Renaissance composers such as Marenzio and Monteverdi, Lauridsen has assimilated such techniques as canon, flexible imitation, and, in particular, a deeply sensitive response to textual images. These influences never result in pastiche, however, but are assimilated into a personal idiom that is simultaneously timeless and contemporary. His music is direct and clear, lively and pensive, emotional but disciplined. Lauridsen is emphatically a composer of the present day who takes his technical mastery from a searching investigation of the past.
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